Saturday, January 23, 2010

Well, after many years of faithful service, my receiver is acting up. I looked up the symptoms of the problem on google, and it seems that this particular problem has happened to other HK owners. The problem is that the volume of the receiver will shoot up suddenly, usually when watching movies. The volume knob also does not have an effect when manually turned down, leaving me no choice but to use the remote, or pause the movie and adjust the volume level back down. Also, as of late the remote is only able to adjust volume down and not up, so there is definitely something wrong with the volume control in the unit. Fortunately, I have been able to react before damaging my speakers, and I am at the point where I don't even use the receiver for surround sound movies anymore because of having to babysit the volume.

I have been thinking about my options in how to handle this problem, and it comes down to either
1. Repairing the HK and hope nothing else goes wrong
2. Replace the receiver by purchasing a newer model with more updated connections.

At this point, i have not gotten any repair estimates and that will have a big impact on my decision to repair or purchase new. I think my true desire is to purchase a new AV Receiver with hdmi connections, the latest HD codecs and good upconversion circuit by Anchor Bay or Silicon Optix. Right now I am looking at the Denon AVR-2310ci and the Yamaha RXV-1065. I am also considering some offerings from Marantz, but the upconversion is not as good as the Denon or Yamaha. I would consider another HK but they like Marantz don't really offer the 'whole package' as they still are using older Faroudja scalers which are trumped by the Anchor Bay and Silicon Optix offerings. I think at this point I will plan on getting a new Denon or Yamaha receiver. The hdmi connections and new HD codecs almost make this a no brainer unless the repair will only cost me like $50-100 with a decent guarantee.